As you may have read, just the other day AT&T announced its intended purchase of T-Mobile for $39 billion.  With the move, AT&T will be the largest mobile carrier in the nation, serving about 130 million Americans.

Many factors likely hastened the acquisition.  Chief among them is the lack of spectrum and related infrastructure for AT&T at a time when wireless broadband use is exploding (you may be reading this story on one such wireless broadband device – a smartphone or tablet).

The move is not a done deal, of course.  It needs regulatory approval from the FCC and DOJ.  And, this is where the horse-trading comes in.  There will be concessions. The trick for the company is to limit them, ensuring they’re narrowly tailored to the acquisition at hand.  The game for policymakers and anti-private property activists is to make them as expansive as possible, addressing policy considerations and other giveaways that could not be obtained in the legislative and regulatory arenas.

One area that will find increased scrutiny is the newly created Net Neutrality regulations – rules which were, many feel, strong-armed by the FCC onto the previously regulation-free Internet.  Notes Bruce Gottlieb, ex-Chief Counsel to FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski:

[T]he FCC’s recent network neutrality decision created less restrictive rule for mobile Internet access service, as compared to wired service, in part due to assumptions about competition in wireless. Expect calls to revisit this decision, as well.

This is not to suggest that the acquisition is bad for consumers.  In fact, I think it help them. They’ll benefit from a stronger company, which will more quickly be able to roll out the next generation of spectrum-guzzling, wireless broadband services we crave.  It will also spur direct competition, and competition in adjacent markets, such as landline broadband. The ecosystem for devices, applications and services will explode, too.  And prices – which have been below the CPI – will likely remain low and affordable (especially considering the added value of more bandwidth, enabling ever-more powerful tools on the network).

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Pejman Yousefzadeh to discus the war in Libya, a union plan to bring America to its knees, and the 2012 presidential campaign.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Does Libya Have a Big Muddy? We Are About to Find Out.
How Did the Obama Administration Get Drawn Into Libya?
About That “Broad Coalition”
CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America
Coffee & Markets: 2012: The Year of the Executive

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Boy, them Googlers Act Fast.

Climate ’skeptic’ website ICECAP posted this item noting Google’s latest gambit in global warming activism, which includes bringing on board as an advisor an academic whose name and address pop up with some frequency in the ClimateGate emails.

Apparently in response, Google has flagged ICECAP’s website with this warning, discouraging traffic:

“This site may be compromised.“

ICECAP host Joe D’Aleo, the first meteorologist at the Weather Channel before that operation sold out to the alarmist industry, brought this to my attention and assures me this warning was not the case until now. He also attests that the site is not compromised. We just have a co-incidence of challenge followed by inaccuracy, is all.

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In 2007, then Sen. Joe Biden appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and said launching an attack without congressional approval is an impeachable offense. This flashback comes on the heels of Obama launching an attack on Libya without congressional approval.

Biden said:

I want to stand by that comment I made. The reason I made that comment is a warning. The reason, I don’t say those things lightly, Chris, you’ve known me for a long time. I was chairman of the Judiciary committee for 17 years or its ranking member. I teach separation of powers and constitutional law. This is something I know. So I got together and brought a group of Constitutional scholars together and write a piece I’m going to deliver to the whole United States Senate in pointing out the president has no Constitutional authority to take this nation to war against a country of 70 million people unless we’re attacked, or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. If he does, I would move to impeach him. The House obviously has to do that– but I would lead an effort to impeach him. The reason for my doing that- I don’t say it lightly, I don’t say it lightly.

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Crossposted: TobyToons.com

On Monday March 21, Supreme Court Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg met at a debate at the Marquette University Law School. The two candidates took questions from former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske, Patrick Marley of the the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, J.R. Ross of Wispolitics.com, and Mike Gousha of WISN. The debate covered a broad range of topics from the recent rancor that seems to divide the court, the Impartial Justice Act, former cases, the Gableman case, and the current issues revolving around the Budget Repair Bill debate.

Below are a few important segments from the debate that prove quite revealing about Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg’s adequacy for the high court.

In this segment, Justice David Prosser notes that on JoAnne Kloppenburg’s campaign Facebook page, she has allowed rhetoric that links her election to overturning the Budget Repair Bill. In addition, Justice Prosser notes that there have been personal attacks made against him on the page as well as Governor Walker. The site has also been a rallying point for information regarding recall petitions and anti-Walker protests. Kloppenburg does not disavow these posts on her page but goes on to say that there is “nothing untrue” about these posts. Media Trackers first brought Kloppenburg’s Facebook page to light in a March 7 article that details many of these posts.

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THEN (January 2009)

“Without stimulus” there would be about 134 million jobs in the U.S. by late 2010:

Source: Administration’s January 2009 Romer/Bernstein Report.

NOW (March 2011)

Without stimulus, there would have been 127 million jobs in the U.S. by late 2010:

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Today, in 1775, Patrick Henry delivered his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech. He really meant it.

**UPDATED

President Barack Obama has won praise from the media — and from himself — for putting the White House visitor logs online. Yet the visitor logs may hide more than they reveal.

The White House is still holding back “tens of thousands” of visitor logs, according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also added that “the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration.”

We also know that some of the most important presidential visitors don’t even walk into the White House. The administration meets K Street lobbyists at Caribou Coffee, and holds secret meetings in Jackson Place townhouses where there are no visitor logs.

The visitor logs that have been released are problematic, because they are simply lists of names, with no way to verify whether a specific name belongs to a particular person.

When the first names were released on Oct. 30, 2009, late on a Friday afternoon, then-White House “ethics czar” Norm Eisen noted the lists included “false positives” — “names that make you think of a well-known person, but are actually someone else.” According to Eisen, these included ordinary visitors named “Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly (“R. Kelly”), and Malik Shabazz.” (more…)

There was already cause for Judge Maryann Sumi to have recused herself in the collective bargaining lawsuit since her son, Jake Sinderbrand is a former employee of the AFL-CIO and SEIU, now more conflict of interests have been discovered.

Judge Sumi’s husband, Carl Sinderbrand donated to the campaigns of three of the “Badger 14″:  Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch.  Additionally Sinderbrand donated to Tom Barrett in his fight against Scott Walker for the governorship.

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In 1981, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare Patricia Harris wrote in the Washington Post that libertarian economists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are “middle class” so they “don’t know what it is to be poor.”

In fact, Williams grew up in a single-parent household in a poor section of Philadelphia. He was raised by his mother, who was a high school dropout. The family spent time on welfare, and eventually moved into the Richard Allen public housing project. (Sowell, whose father died before he was born, was the son of a maid.)

Drafted into the peacetime Army, Williams eventually earned a PhD from UCLA in the late 1960s and quickly became a sought-after researcher and public intellectual. His best known book, 1982’s The State Against Blacks, argues that a major cause of black unemployment is government intervention in the labor market.

Williams’ contrarian views have had wide exposure through documentaries, public appearances, and for the past 30 years, a syndicated weekly column. Since 1992, Williams has also been a frequent guest host of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Now a professor emeritus at George Mason University, Williams has taught at Temple University, California State University-Los Angeles, and other universities. (Go here for his personal web page.)

His new book, Up from the Projects: An Autobiography, is a fascinating look at his childhood, his half-century-long marriage to his recently departed wife, his unusual career path, and the genesis of his views on race, economics, and politics.

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I’m in favor of a social safety net. My position on this is liberal, not libertarian. I’ve never personally taken a dime in unemployment benefits but I don’t judge people who lose their job and have to get public assistance.

But here’s no contradiction in being in favor of benefits for the jobless and also acknowledging the reality that at at some point, these benefits become counter-productive. It seems pretty obvious to me that at a certain point they no longer become an incentive to get a job but start to be a real disincentive. I personally think 99 weeks is way, way past that point.

I was talking about this on Twitter the other day when I first heard about The 99ers. They were described to me as a sort of union for the unemployed.

They have a slick looking website. (It’s an interesting and perhaps telling detail that that they are promoting the fake ‘ poor people in Minnesota can’t carry more than $20’ story) They have their own #99ers hashtag on Twitter. They have a video with music that could be in a beer commercial.

On one hand, this IS a form of productivity but mostly his just strikes me as an awful, awful idea. Being jobless or unproductive isn’t a condition that anyone would want to stay in, but I can’t help feeling that as soon as you have your own Twitter hashtag, you’ve actually formed some sort of little club.

By declaring yourself a 99er, you’re identifying yourself with what should be a temporary state, not at all part of your being. Politically, this is a group out there pushing for more benefits for the unemployed with apparently no end in sight; a bottomless pit of dependency.

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Among advocates of limited government, there is growing unease about the fiscal fight in Washington.

This is not because anything bad has happened. Indeed, Democrats thus far have been acquiescing – at least on a temporary basis – to conservative demands for $61 billion of spending cuts over the rest of the current fiscal year. This is remarkable after 10 years of endlessly expanding government.

Here’s what Jennifer Rubin wrote at her Right Turn blog.

A senior Senate adviser wisecracked, “A month ago, they said they couldn’t possibly cut a dime. Then they said the $4 billion [in] cuts in the first CR were a non-starter. Now they’re bragging about cutting spending?” It is a remarkable turn of events and another sign that Reid was bested in this round of budget battling. Twice now he capitulated to House Republicans.

This analysis is right, and it is very similar to what I wrote back on March 2 regarding the first short-term agreement.

So why, then, am I worried?

I’m nervous because the fiscal fight is evolving in a bad direction. In that March 2 post, I warned that “Republicans should be very careful about having their energy dissipated by a series of diversionary battles over short-run spending bills.”

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From Business Insider:

Stephen Lerner

[Former SEIU Official Stephen] Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore–the redistribution of wealth and the return of “$17 trillion” stolen from the middle class by Wall Street–is to “destabilize the country.”

Lerner’s plan is to organize a mass, coordinated “strike” on mortgage, student loan, and local government debt payments–thus bringing the banks to the edge of insolvency and forcing them to renegotiate the terms of the loans. This destabilization and turmoil, Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

Lerner’s plan starts by attacking JP Morgan Chase in early May, with demonstrations on Wall Street, protests at the annual shareholder meeting, and then calls for a coordinated mortgage strike.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Melissa Clouthier to discuss the 2012 GOP dream candidate and determine if it’s time for the American people to elect an executive for President.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Republicans: Go Boldly
Governor Tim Pawlenty Presents His Case
Coffee & Markets: For 2012, is Boring the New Awesome?

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Caveat emptor: The first-quarter economy is slowing and inflation is rising. A month ago, economists were optimistic about the potential for 4 percent growth. Now they are marking down their estimates toward 2.5 percent. Behind this, consumer expectations are falling while inflation fears are going up.

A recent CNBC All American Economic Survey revealed that 37 percent of respondents expect the economy to get worse in the next year. That’s up about 15 percentage points from the December poll. The key reasons? Worries over rising food and fuel costs. Respondents anticipate prices to climb 6.6 percent over the next year. That’s double the 3 percent inflation registered in the December survey.

Supporting the CNBC poll, the early March consumer sentiment index from the University of Michigan dropped sharply, with the reading for consumer expectations falling 14 points. Additionally, one-year inflation expectations have risen to 4.6 percent in March from 3.4 percent in February.

Of course, everyone has been badly shaken by the terrible disaster in Japan. For the U.S. economy, supply-chain disruptions will damage growth. Also, the civil war in Libya and the broad unrest across North Africa and the Middle East has fueled a mild oil-price shock, also subtracting from U.S. growth.

So if the economy ending in the March quarter slows to less than 3 percent, it would mark the fourth-straight sub-3-percent GDP reading. Despite the strength in the manufacturing sector and rising corporate profits, that reading would underscore the softness of this recovery cycle.

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So, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill ‘forgot’ to pay property taxes on her private jet. (There are at least three things wrong with that sentence.) But, her ‘oversight’ in ‘forgetting’ about a $300,000 tax bill is just the latest example of her pattern of tax problems and obfuscation. The document below details a multi-decade pattern of an apparent belief that laws are for ‘the other people’, not important elected officials like herself. (Oh, and did we mention that one of her husband’s properties was used repeatedly as a crack house?) Behold what has become of the stewards of our Republic.

McCaskill Pre-Shepard Personal and Finance Section

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My 401K is down 40%, my employer just cut the match; and it looks like I may have work until I’m 70 years old. I also pay for pensions to public employees who retired in their 50s.

I don’t have enough money to go on vacation this year, but I paid my share of the federal government’s $2.6 million grant to teach Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly. I pay for bridges to nowhere.

I drive a 1997 Honda Accord, but I had to pay for my neighbor’s $41,000 electric car.  I also bailed out the United Auto Workers.

I contribute to my children’s 529 college savings plan, but since I don’t qualify for financial aid I pay for other people’s kids to go to school as well. I also pay for the sociology classes where I am sneered at for my lack of social conscience and denounced as the very essence of greed, racism and environmental insensitivity.

I exercise regularly, watch my cholesterol, and pay for my own health insurance as well as copays and deductibles. I also pay for Other People’s tonsillectomies, appendectomies and occasional rhinoplasties. I pay taxes for Medicare, Medicaid and for various medical programs for poor children and now I will get to subsidize the health care of several million more non-elderly, non-impoverished Americans.

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On April 1, Judicial Watch will represent the Arizona State Legislature in court, defending SB 1070, Arizona’s get-tough illegal immigration law, against the Obama administration’s all-out legal assault.

The Arizona Legislature has every right to defend its law, but the Obama administration is trying to block it from joining the lawsuit.

As noted by The Associated Press: “A federal judge set an April 1 hearing for arguments over the Arizona Legislature’s request to become a party in the U.S. Justice Department’s challenge to the state’s immigration enforcement law. The Legislature argues that lawmakers should be allowed to help defend the law and cite a new law that lets legislative leaders participate in efforts to defend the enforcement law against challenges.”

As I told you last month, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed “emergency legislation” on February 7, 2011, paving the way for the Arizona legislature’s intervention. And we filed a “Motion to Intervene” on February 11, 2011.

However, as noted in our recent response to the court filed on March 7, the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to keep the Arizona Legislature out of the lawsuit by raising “a host of meritless objections:”

[The Obama administration] makes the patronizing suggestion that if the Legislature happens to have “arguments that it wishes to advance, it should do so through defendants” or simply as an amicus. It is undeniable that the State of Arizona has now unequivocally indicated how it wishes to be sued in this case. It is not the proper role of the United States to try to dictate how Arizona presents its defense. Arizona is entitled to defend itself in the manner it sees fit. With the permission of this Court, it should be allowed to do so.

In recent installments of the Weekly Update, I’ve put the spotlight on the Obama administration’s abysmal record on illegal immigration.

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